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A REVIEW OF THE P5: THE U.S. VISION FOR 

PARTICLE PHYSICS AFTER DISCOVERY 

OF THE HIGGS BOSON 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 10, 2014 

Serial No. 113–78 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

CHRIS COLLINS, New York 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

SCOTT PETERS, California 

DEREK KILMER, Washington 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

JULIA BROWNLEY, California 

ROBIN KELLY, Illinois 

KATHERINE CLARK, Massachusetts 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

HON. CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming, Chair 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

RANDY WEBER, Texas 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

MARC VEASEY, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

KATHERINE CLARK, Massachusetts 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

June 10, 2014 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Cynthia Lummis, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ........................................................................................................... 6 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 7 

Statement by Representative Eric Swalwell, Minority Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 7 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 8 

Witnesses: 

Dr. Steve Ritz, P5 Chair and Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 10 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 13 

Dr. Persis Drell, Director Emerita, SLAC National Laboratory 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 20 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 22 

Dr. Nigel Lockyer, Director, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 28 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 30 

Dr. Natalie Roe, Director, Physics Division, Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 36 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 38 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 44 

Appendix I: Additional Material for the Record 

Submitted statement for the record by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, 

Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 58 

Article submitted for the record by Randy Hultgren, Member, Subcommittee 

on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 

Representatives .................................................................................................... 59 

(1) 

A REVIEW OF THE P5: THE U.S. VISION FOR 

PARTICLE PHYSICS AFTER DISCOVERY 

OF THE HIGGS BOSON 

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2014 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Cynthia Lummis 

[Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
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4 
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Chairwoman LUMMIS. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Energy will come to order. 

And we welcome today’s hearing titled ‘‘A Review of the P5: The 

U.S. Vision for Particle Physics After Discovery of the Higgs 

Boson.’’ I am going to need an explanation of what that is. 

In front of you are packets containing the written testimonies, biographies, and truth-in-testimony disclosures for today’s witness 

panel . And I now recognize myself for five minutes for an opening 

statement. 

I would like to welcome everyone to today’s hearing on the status 

of particle physics research in the United States. Today, the Energy Subcommittee will discuss the strategic plan for U.S. particle 

physics in the global context offered by the Particle Physics Project 

Prioritization Panel, also known as the P5. 

Researchers in particle physics seek to unveil the fundamental 

components of existence in an effort to better understand the interrelationship between space, matter, and time. The field has been 

highly successful, recently yielding discoveries of the heaviest elementary particle, the top quark, the tiny masses of neutrinos, the 

accelerated expansion of the universe, and the Higgs boson. 

The P5 plan reflects approximately one year of deliberations to 

reach consensus throughout the particle physics community regarding the best opportunities for the United States to maintain global 

significance in this scientific discipline while considering three potential budget scenarios. 

While the U.S. remains in a state of fiscal uncertainty, reducing 

overall Federal spending in order to arrive at a balanced budget 

should be a top priority. Yet during this process, we cannot overlook the fact that the Federal Government plays a critical role 

when it comes to the Nation’s long-term competitiveness in the 

physical sciences. As noted in the P5 report, ‘‘the countries that 

lead these activities attract the top minds and talent from around 

the world, inspire the next generation of scientists and technologists, and host international teams dedicated to a common purpose.’’ In particle physics, the U.S. is already slipping and stands 

to lose its position of global significance if we do not act boldly. 

Basic research, such as that which is funded through the Office 

of Science’s High Energy Physics, also known as HEP, pronounced 

HEP, is proper use of taxpayer funds. As the authorizing Committee of the House, we are responsible to ensure that the HEP 

program uses its limited funds prudently. I say this to underscore 

the importance of the P5, which had to make difficult choices but 

found a way to achieve consensus in this very competitive area of 

cutting-edge science and provide the U.S. particle physics program 

with a road map for success. 

To the witnesses, I convey my admiration for your hard work for 

those who took part in the P5 directly and those who carry out this 

unique research that we will learn more about today. I want to 

thank the witnesses for participating in today’s hearing and look 

forward to their testimony. 

A high school colleague of mine by the name of Greg Snow became part of the team that worked on particle physics. I see you 

nodding. And he and I were very dear friends, high school friends, 

and so I have followed his career and note his excitement about 
7 

what you have done. And so I have lived vicariously through him 

following your work. And his excitement is contagious I might say. 

So welcome. We are delighted to have you here. 

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Lummis follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN CYNTHIA LUMMIS

I would like to welcome everyone to today’s hearing on the status of particle physics research in the United States. Today, the Energy Subcommittee will discuss a 

strategic plan for U.S. particle physics in the global context offered by the Particle 

Physics Project Prioritization Panel, also known as the ‘‘P5.’’ 

Researchers in particle physics seek to unveil the fundamental components of existence in an effort to better understand the interrelationship between space, matter, and time. The field has been highly successful—recently yielding discoveries of 

the heaviest elementary particle (the top quark), the tiny masses of neutrinos, the 

accelerated expansion of the Universe, and the Higgs boson. The P5 plan reflects 

approximately one year of deliberation to reach consensus throughout the particle 

physics community regarding the best opportunities for the United States to maintain global significance in this scientific discipline while considering three potential 

budget scenarios. 

While the U.S. remains in a state of fiscal uncertainty, reducing overall federal 

spending in order to arrive at a balanced budget should be a top priority. Yet during 

this process, we cannot overlook the fact that the federal government plays a critical 

role when it comes to the nation’s long-term competitiveness in the physical 

sciences. As noted in the P5 report, ‘‘the countries that lead these activities attract 

the top minds and talent from around the world, inspire the next generation of scientists and technologists, and host international teams dedicated to a common purpose.’’ In particle physics, the U.S. is already slipping and stands to lose its position 

of global significance if we do not act boldly. 

Basic research, such as that which is funded through the Office of Science’s High 

Energy Physics (HEP) program, is a proper use of taxpayer funds. As the authorizing Committee of the House, we are responsible to ensure that the HEP program 

uses its limited funds prudently. I say this to underscore the importance of the P5, 

which had to make difficult choices, but found a way to achieve consensus in this 

very competitive area of cutting-edge science and provide the U.S. particle physics 

program with a road map for success. 

To the witnesses, I convey my admiration for your hard work—for those who took 

part in the P5 directly and those who carry out this unique research that we will 

learn more about today. I want to thank the witnesses for participating in today’s 

hearing and look forward to their testimony. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. And now I recognize the Ranking Member, 

the gentlemen from California, Mr. Swalwell, for an opening statement. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Thank you, Chairman Lummis, for holding this 

hearing. 

I also want to thank this excellent panel of witnesses for their 

testimony and being here this morning. I am especially pleased to 

see northern California so well represented at the panel, which 

clearly means that this is going to be a particularly informative 

and productive Congressional hearing today. And that is not of 

course taking anything away from Dr. Lockyer. 

We are here to discuss the recently released P5 report, which 

lays out a vision for particle physics in the United States over the 

next decade. The timing of this report could not be any better as 

we are extremely excited about the history of this field. 

With the major advances that have been made over just the past 

couple of years such as the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the 

Higgs boson, as well as the potential detection of gravitational 

waves first predicted by Einstein 100 years ago, we are equipped 

with knowledge and advancing technologies that will allow humans 
8 

to further engage our innate curiosity about everything from fundamental building blocks for the world as well as for the origin and 

the evolution of the universe. 

However, as amazing as these developments may be and as 

much as we would like to continue to push the frontiers of science, 

we are also forced to keep in mind our currently fiscally constrained environment. This is the reason for the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation charging the P5 panel 

with doing the hard work of prioritizing particle physics projects 

under several difficult budget scenarios, the lowest one being particularly restrictive and in my view unacceptable given the critical 

missed opportunities that would be required to meet it. 

I also believe that the end result is a very strong product, and 

I want to thank Dr. Ritz for his leadership on the P5, as well as 

the entire P5 team for their efforts. Tough decisions were obviously 

being made, especially considering the long-term nature of building 

and operating particle physics facilities. 

The Higgs boson I mentioned earlier was found using the Large 

Hadron Collider, which took ten years to build and will continue 

to operate well into the next decade. And in fact the Higgs boson 

existence was first projected and postulated 50 years ago. This 

gives us an idea of how far out the P5 had to look when working 

through the prioritization process, and what they produced provides policymakers with sound guidance, which we should in turn 

use to provide the particle physics community with the support and 

stability it needs to conduct complex long-term research that will 

help us understand far more about the nature of our universe. The 

United States has a long history of leadership in advanced physics, 

and I think that we have been presented with a report that will 

ensure that this continues to be the case. 

Madam Chair, before I yield back, I would like to quickly congratulate Dr. Drell on being named Dean of Engineering at Stanford University. She will be the first woman to serve in that role, 

and that is noteworthy and worthy of our congratulations. This is 

even more evidence that we have truly assembled some of the top 

minds in the field here today. 

Thank you again for holding this hearing and I am looking forward to learning more from our panel. And with that, I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Swalwell follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE MINORITY RANKING MEMBER ERIC

SWALWELL

Thank you Chairman Lummis for holding this hearing, and I also want to thank 

this excellent panel of witnesses for their testimony and for being here today. I’m 

especially pleased to see northern California so well represented, which clearly 

means that this is going to be a particularly informative and productive hearing. 

That of course is not meant to take anything away from you, Dr. Lockyer. 

We’re here today to discuss the recently released P5 report, which lays out a vision for particle physics in the United States over the next decade. The timing of 

this report couldn’t be any better, as we are at an extremely exciting time in the 

history of the field. With the major advances that have been made over just the past 

couple of years, such as the Nobel Prizewinning discovery of the Higgs boson [pronounced: BOZE-on] as well as the potential detection of gravitational waves first 

predicted by Einstein almost a hundred years ago, we are equipped with new knowledge and advancing technologies that will allow humans to further engage our in-
9 

nate curiosity about everything from the fundamental building blocks of our world 

to the origin and evolution of the universe. 

However, as amazing as these developments may be and as much as we would 

like to continue to push the frontiers of science, we are also forced to keep in mind 

our current fiscally constrained environment. This is the reason the Department of 

Energy and the National Science Foundation charged the P5 Panel with doing the 

hard work of prioritizing particle physics projects under several difficult budget scenarios—the lowest one being particularly restrictive and, in my view, unacceptable 

given the critical missed opportunities that would be required to meet it. I believe 

the end result is a very strong product, and I want to thank Dr. Ritz for his leadership of the P5, as well as the entire P5 team for their efforts. 

Tough decisions were obviously made, especially considering the long-term nature 

of building and operating particle physics facilities. The Higgs boson I mentioned 

earlier was found using the Large Hadron Collider, which took ten years to build 

and will continue operations well into the next decade. And, in fact, the Higgs 

boson’s existence was first postulated 50 years ago. 

This gives us an idea of how far out the P5 had to look when working through 

the prioritization process. And what they produced provides policymakers with 

sound guidance, which we should in turn use to provide the particle physics community with the support and the stability it needs to conduct complex, long-term research that will help us understand far more about the nature of our universe. The 

United States has a long history of leadership in advanced physics, and I think we 

have been presented with a report that will help ensure that that continues to be 

the case. 

Madam Chair, before I yield back, I would like to quickly congratulate Dr. Drell 

on recently being named Dean of Engineering at Stanford University. She will be 

the first woman to serve in that role. This is even more evidence that we have truly 

assembled some of the top minds in the field here today. 

Thank you again for holding this hearing, and I am looking forward to learning 

more from our panel. With that, I yield back. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. I thank the Ranking Member. If there are 

any other Members who wish to submit additional opening statements, your statements will be added to the record. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. At this time I would like to introduce our 

witnesses. 

Our first witness today is Dr. Steve Ritz, P5 Chair and Professor 

at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Dr. Ritz is also the 

director of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics at the University of California. Previously, Dr. Ritz was a Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and Astrophysicist at NASA’s 

Goddard Space Flight Center as well. Dr. Ritz received his Ph.D. 

in physics from the University of Wisconsin. We welcome you and 

warmly appreciate your attendance today. 

Our second witness is Dr. Persis—that is a beautiful first 

name—Dr. Persis Drell, Director Emerita of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Dr. Drell served as Director of SLAC from 

2007 to 2012. Dr. Drell is also a Professor of Physics at Stanford. 

Previously, Dr. Drell was the Associate Director for the research division at SLAC. She has also served as Deputy Project Manager for 

the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Dr. Drell received her 

Ph.D. in atomic physics from the University of California. 

I understand you also were one of the conceivers of the notion 

of the P5, which I believe has worked extremely well and we thank 

you for your foresight in organizing these issues. 

Next, I would like to introduce—oh, good, Mr. Hultgren is here. 

I am so pleased because he had asked to introduce today’s third 

witness. So at this time I would like to yield to the gentleman from 

Illinois, Mr. Hultgren, to introduce Dr. Roe. No, excuse me, Dr. 

Lockyer. 
10 

Mr. HULTGREN. Yes. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Perfect. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you. I apologize for being a little bit late. 

I had to run by a markup in Financial Services. 

But great to be with you today. Thank you all so much for being 

here. It really is my honor, Madam Chair, to introduce someone 

who is doing a great job and has become a very good friend. Our 

third witness today is Dr. Nigel Lockyer, Director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Previously, Dr. Lockyer served as 

the Director of Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, TRIUMF. He was also Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. Prior to his work 

at the Canadian Physics Laboratory, Dr. Lockyer served as a Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lockyer 

earned his Ph.D. in physics from the Ohio State University. 

So glad you are here. Thank you, Dr. Lockyer, and thank you for 

your great work at Fermi Lab. 

I yield back. Thanks, Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Hultgren. 

Our final witness today is Dr. Natalie Roe, Director of the Physics Division at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory. Dr. Roe 

joined Lawrence Berkley in 1989 as a kindergartener apparently. 

No, it says as a postdoctoral fellow. I suppose those things can happen simultaneously, but it is impressive, Dr. Roe, very impressive. 

She has a distinguished record of research in service to the Physics 

Division, the laboratory, and to the national high energy physics 

community. Dr. Roe has been an active participant in developing 

the strategic vision of the Physics Division and has been a member 

of its Advisory Committee since 2006. Dr. Roe received her Ph.D. 

in physics from Stanford University. 

As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited to 

five minutes, after which Members of the Committee will have five 

minutes each to ask questions. Again, panel, we are delighted you 

are here. 

I now recognize Dr. Ritz for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. STEVE RITZ, 

P5 CHAIR AND PROFESSOR, 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ 

Dr. RITZ. Very good, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. 

Chairman Lummis, Ranking Member Swalwell, Members of the 

Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to this important hearing. 

Particle physicists have come together to make a recommended 

plan that is driven by the science and that meets tight fiscal constraints. The plan enables leadership by the United States, resolves 

key issues for the field, and envisions a continuous flow of exciting 

and important results while making essential investments in the 

future. HEPAP, the FACA panel advising the DOE and NSF, considered the report carefully and voted unanimously to approve it on 

May 22, 2014. 

As you know, particle physics explores the fundamental constituents of matter and energy, revealing profound connections underlying everything we see. The field is highly successful. There have 
11 

been major discoveries recently that point the way forward, and 

since 2008, three Nobel prizes related to particle physics were 

awarded. I would just like to add here that one of the recent Nobel 

laureates, Saul Perlmutter, was a member of our panel, and we 

very much appreciated that. 

Research and particle physics inspires young people to engage 

with science. Particle physics is global, addressing the most compelling questions of the field is beyond the finances and technical 

expertise of any one nation or region. The United States and major 

players in other regions can together address the full breadth of 

the field’s most urgent scientific questions if each hosts a unique 

world-class facility at home and partners in high-priority facilities 

hosted elsewhere. Strong foundations of international cooperation 

exist with the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, at CERN, serving as 

an example of a successful large international science project. 

Tough choices were required. Our panel understood that an important part of our job was to recommend ways for the United 

States to invest purposefully in areas that have the biggest impacts 

and that make the most efficient use of limited resources. The 

charge calls for planning under two specific budget scenarios with 

ten-year profiles reflecting current fiscal realities, as well as a third 

unconstrained scenario. 

We started with the science. A yearlong community-wide study 

called ‘‘Snowmass’’ preceded the formation of P5, and based on this 

comprehensive work by the broad community, we identified five 

compelling lines of inquiry that show great promise for discovery 

over the next 10 to 20 years. These are the science drivers of the 

field, and they are: Use the Higgs boson as a new tool for discovery; 

pursue the physics associated with neutrino mass; identify the new 

physics of dark matter; understand cosmic acceleration, dark energy, inflation—and I assure you this inflation does not involve the 

consumer price index, as if you were wondering—and explore the 

unknown, new particles, interactions, and physical principles. I 

look forward to discussing these with you in more detail and why 

we are really so excited about them. 

The prioritization is in the selection and timing of the specific 

projects to address these science drivers. Using an explicit set of selection criteria that we developed, we recommend some projects not 

be implemented and some existing efforts be reduced or terminated. Having made these choices, the field could move forward immediately with a prioritized and time-ordered recommended program, which is summarized in the report in Table 1 and includes 

the following features: The enormous physics potential of the LHC, 

which will be entering a new era with its planned upgrades, will 

be fully exploited. U.S. scientists continue to play very visible leadership roles, and the provided hardware would be designed and 

built here in the United States. The United States would host the 

world-leading neutrino program with an optimized set of short- and 

long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. You will hear more 

about that. The long-term focus of the program would be the Long 

Baseline Neutrino Facility, LBNF. The Proton Improvement Plan, 

PIP–II, project at Fermilab would provide the world’s most powerful neutrino beam. 
12 

Large projects are ordered by peak construction time based on 

budget constraints, physics needs, and readiness criteria. This was 

an important thing the panel did. Several small- and medium-sized 

projects in areas especially promising for near-term discoveries and 

in which the United States is in a strong leadership position would 

move forward under all budget scenarios. Another important 

project of this type, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, 

DESI, would also move forward except in the lowest budget scenario. 

Specific investments would be made in essential accelerator R&D 

and instrumentation R&D. The interest expressed in Japan in 

hosting the International Linear Collider is an exciting development. Recommendation—recommended participation by the United 

States in project construction depends on a number of factors, some 

of which are beyond the scope of P5. 

Six significant changes in direction are recommended. Of these 

I highlight here the first one: Increase investment in construction 

of new facilities. In constrained budget scenarios this will necessarily entail some judicious reductions in the research program. 

This represents a large commitment to building new experiments, 

which we see as essential. We titled our report ‘‘Building for Discovery.’’ As detailed in the report and as I hope we can discuss 

today, the bang for the buck of relatively small incremental investments in particle physics would be really big. 

The lowest budget scenario is precarious. It approaches the point 

beyond which hosting a large project in the United States would 

not be possible while maintaining the other elements necessary for 

mission success. Without the capability to host a large project, the 

United States would lose its position as a global leader in this field 

and international relationships that have been so productive would 

be fundamentally altered. 

The broader impacts of particle physics research are many. These 

are summarized in Section 4 of the report. Topics include material 

science, medical imaging and therapy, computing, neuroscience, 

and bringing to life the earliest audio recordings. 

There was continuous effort on many fronts throughout the P5 

process to maintain direct community involvement. I see my time 

has run short so I would be happy to discuss that further with you 

in questions. It was a very important process and the way in which 

we work I think really resulted in the best possible plan for the 

field. 

In conclusion, the P5 report offers important opportunities for 

U.S. investment in science, prioritized under tightly constrained 

budget scenarios in the charge, wondrous projects that address profound questions inspire and invigorate far beyond their specific 

fields and they lay the foundations for next-century technologies we 

can only begin to imagine. Historic opportunities await us enabled 

by decades of hard work and support. The U.S. particle physics 

community is ready to move forward. 

Thank you, thank you for your support of U.S. science and for 

the opportunity to be here today. I look forward to hearing your 

thoughts and answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Ritz follows:] 
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Chairwoman LUMMIS. Thank you, Dr. Ritz. 

I now recognize Dr. Drell to present her testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. PERSIS DRELL, 

DIRECTOR EMERITA, 

SLAC NATIONAL LABORATORY 

Dr. DRELL. Chairman Lummis, Ranking Member Swalwell, 

Members and staff of the Subcommittee, I too am very pleased to 

be here today to provide my perspective on the future of particle 

physics in light of the new P5 report. 

It is a particular pleasure for me to participate in these hearings. 

Twelve years ago I was part of the HEPAP subpanel that recommended the creation of P5. We believed that such a 

prioritization process would be essential in ensuring that we judiciously use the available resources in our field—both human and 

financial—to pursue a balanced, diverse, and exciting program. It 

is not possible to pursue all of the scientific opportunities we see 

before us. We must choose wisely. 

In my opinion, this most recent P5 report does an outstanding 

job of setting the path forward for U.S. particle physics. Fully recognizing that resources are constrained, the report sets forth a 

staged plan focusing on the most compelling science, building on 

U.S. strengths across the field, ensuring that the United States retains a leadership role in this important area of research. 

Before discussing the report, it helps to remember why having a 

healthy particle physics program is important for our Nation. I will 

start with the science. Particle physics asks very basic and fundamental questions about the world we live in. It is incumbent on us 

to pursue the answers to those questions, as has every great society that has preceded us for millennia. 

In addition, the fundamental nature of these questions draws interest to science generally. Just look at the excitement over the discovery of the Higgs. And while many factors go into an individual’s 

decision to pursue a career in science, the idea of big fundamental 

questions out there just waiting to be answered is certainly one enticement. 

Finally, particle physics is an essential part of the fabric of the 

physical sciences in the United State. It contributes broadly to 

other disciplines and benefits enormously from research in other 

fields. 

A vivid illustration of the interplay between different scientific 

fields comes from SLAC National Accelerator Lab, where I was the 

director from 2007 to 2012. SLAC was born as a particle physics 

laboratory. We turned off our last accelerator for particle physics 

in 2008. In 2009 we turned on the world’s first x-ray free-electron 

laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source. The LCLS is a tool for 

chemistry, for biology, for materials science, for condensed matter 

physics. It is not a tool for particle physics. However, its rapid 

early success relied on years of research and development in particle physics aimed at making precision-controlled beams of electrons for future linear colliders. 

The challenge we have been facing for some time now is how to 

craft a healthy particle physics program in the United States with 

constrained resources and an increasingly international environ-
21 

ment. The P5 subpanel has done an outstanding job of charting our 

course. They started, as Dr. Ritz said, with the science. To be successful we need to focus on and prioritize the opportunities that 

give us the most transformational scientific advances and attract 

the best talent. 

Following a yearlong process of engaging the community, P5 articulated five intertwined science drivers for the field and then developed criteria for their prioritization process and evaluated the 

projects against those criteria to craft the program for the future. 

The P5 process engaged the entire community, both laboratories 

and the university community. The transparency and inclusivity of 

the process were phenomenal and exceptionally well done. The 

community is deeply in debt to the leadership shown by Dr. Ritz. 

The plan P5 crafted reflects the voices, priorities, and thoughts of 

many in our community. It is the reason the community can stand 

behind this plan. 

In ending, I would like to note that the field of particle physics 

in the United States and in the world is changing dramatically. We 

used to define ourselves solely in terms of our primary accelerator 

tools, but to quote the former White House Science Advisor Jack 

Marburger, ‘‘Opportunities have emerged for discovery about the 

fundamental nature of the universe that we never expected and 

technology places those discoveries within our reach.’’ 

Going forward, we must have a program that allows us to focus 

efforts across a broad variety of tools to realize the new scientific 

opportunities. That includes observatories in space, telescopes on 

mountains, sensitive detectors in deep caves under the earth, in addition to our traditional accelerator tools. 

The plan outlined by P5 and supported by the particle physics 

community is a realistic, executable roadmap for a new era and it 

will enable a future of discovery that is every bit as exciting as our 

past. It was hard but the results are worth the effort. This roadmap will allow the field to move forward and to deliver success. 

Thank you for the opportunity to share my views with you today. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Drell follows:] 
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Chairwoman LUMMIS. Thank you, Dr. Drell. 

And now the Chair recognizes Dr. Lockyer for your opening 

statement. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. NIGEL LOCKYER, DIRECTOR, 

FERMI NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY 

Dr. LOCKYER. Thank you. Good morning, Chair Lummis, Ranking Member Swalwell, Congressman Hultgren, and other Members. 

The P5 report lays out a bright future for particle physics community and the Fermilab strongly supports the recommendations 

of the P5 report and it has embraced its role in implementing the 

strategic vision for the field. If implemented, the report should 

maintain and reinvigorate U.S. leadership in particle physics. 

For the benefit of the Ranking Member, Fermilab is located 42 

miles west of Chicago in Batavia, Illinois. It is a 68,000—I wish it 

was—a 6,800 acre laboratory, 1,700 employees, 2,100 users. It has 

the largest accelerator complex in the United States and delivers 

the most intense beams of neutrinos not only at Fermilab but also 

to Minnesota. So the beams themselves travel through the earth, 

which is one of the more interesting properties of neutrinos. They 

travel through just about anything. 

Fermilab is largely open to the public and is the home of a small 

bison herd, better known as buffalo, and Fermilab is managed by 

Fermilab Research Alliance, a partnership between the University 

of Chicago and the URA, an association of 88 universities. Forty 

thousand K through 12 students participated in activities at 

Fermilab last year. Eight thousand visitors took tours or dropped 

into the Lederman Science Center, and over 1,000 college and university students are involved in on-site program and internships. 

So to put things in a little bit of context, the United States has 

been amongst the leaders in particle physics for the last several 

decades. Fermilab operated the highest energy collider in the 

world. The United States pioneered superconducting magnet technology and built the first large superconducting accelerator, the 

Tevatron, which was 4 miles in circumference. Over 1,000 graduate 

students received Ph.D.’s and over 1,000 scientific papers were 

published from that program. The discovery of the top quark, as 

you heard from the Chair, was the crowning achievement, the 

heaviest fundamental particle ever observed. Today, the Large 

Hadron Collider has the highest energy in the world. 

So what is next for the United States? P5 has endorsed a portfolio of projects. I will comment on three: the LHC, the ILC, and 

neutrinos, LBNF. Our goal is to have one optimal accelerator-based 

neutrino program in the world—okay—and not three suboptimal 

facilities, so strictly limited by fiscal and human resources and not 

by the ambitions of the scientists. We are trying to collect everybody together into one single program. 

P5 recommends we fully exploit the Large Hadron Collider. The 

program has tremendous discovery potential, and I think the anticipation in our community is really something when you ask people about what they expect to come out of the program in the next 

few years. It is going to be the highest energy again. They are stepping up the energy and, you know, everybody is quite excited about 

that. 
29 

So the existing science, as you mentioned, attracts some of the 

brightest students into physics. U.S. technology contribution to the 

LHC in the future is critical. The high field magnet technology has 

now evolved to yet a new type of conductor, niobium 310, and the 

United States is the only place that makes that. That has been 

done with a collaboration by DOE Office of Science labs, 

Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley lab, and Fermilab. 

The P5 report is supportive of U.S. involvement in the International Linear Collider. The 20-mile-long accelerator has been designed by a global team over the last decade and Japan is now seriously considering hosting the machine. The United States and 

Fermilab is well suited to contribute technically to the machine. In 

fact, it is hard to imagine Japan being able to proceed without our 

partnership. It is truly a huge undertaking and certainly worthy of 

a global project. 

Our community has decided that neutrinos are where the action 

is. You have 100 billion neutrinos going through your thumbnail 

per second as you sit here in this room. The particle indeed is very 

mysterious and continues to surprise physicists after every major 

measurement. It has to be important. 

P5 envisioned a program of experiments over short distances and 

one over a long distance, all the way to the Sanford Underground 

Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota. The old Homestake mine 

where Ray Davis, my officemate at the University of Pennsylvania, 

did his work to earn the Nobel Prize for detecting neutrinos from 

the sun. 

For LBNF there is a near detector and a far detector, one at 

Fermilab and one in South Dakota. The detector would sit about 

a mile underground and be, at least in the present configuration, 

40,000 tons of liquid argon, or liquid air if you like. 

The impact of fundamental physics is significant, too. Fermilab 

is making a concerted effort to commercialize its technology to help 

create jobs for Americans, build industries, and contribute to society. Today, we see small, portable, high-powered accelerators as 

having the potential to have major impact on numerous industries 

such as microelectronics, transportation, and the national gas industry. I am happy to expand upon these in our discussions. 

Finally, let me say again that the P5 report lays out a bright future for the U.S. particle physics community in the global context. 

The report has made clear choices and Fermilab is beginning to implement these choices along with our colleagues at OHAP and the 

Department of Energy. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Lockyer follows:] 
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Chairwoman LUMMIS. Thank you, Dr. Lockyer. And we don’t 

know why those buzzers go off when they do, but we appreciate 

your unflappability with regard to that. 

I now recognize Dr. Roe to present her testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. NATALIE ROE, 

DIRECTOR, PHYSICS DIVISION, 

LAWRENCE BERKLEY NATIONAL LABORATORY 

Dr. ROE. Thank you, Chairman Lummis, Ranking Member 

Swalwell, distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, and thank 

you for inviting me to participate in this important hearing. 

I completed my graduate studies in particle physics 25 years ago 

at SLAC. My thesis experiment had roughly a dozen scientists, cost 

less than $1 million, and it was built, commissioned, took data, and 

published its main results all during my time as a grad student. 

Today, the Large Hadron Collider is a multibillion-dollar machine. The design of the LHC began over 20 years ago and each 

of the four experiments has several thousand physicists. With suitable upgrades, the LHC will likely continue for another 20 years. 

This increase in scale, in size, in dollars, in time, and in human 

capital is necessary to extend our reach to higher energies and 

higher intensities. 

Although I have witnessed these dramatic changes in our field, 

small- and intermediate-scale projects, such as the one I participated in at Stanford, still have tremendous potential to make 

groundbreaking discoveries. This was recognized in the P5 report, 

which stressed the value of a balanced portfolio, and my goal today 

is to explain this recommendation of P5 and provide a few key examples of small- and medium-sized projects with big potential. 

As evidenced by my personal experience, these smaller projects 

provide excellent training for students and postdocs. Smaller experiments can go after ‘‘blue-sky’’ ideas. They can be nimble and 

take risks with the potential to shake up the field. A prime example of what can come out of a small project is a project started in 

the early 1990s called the Supernova Cosmology Project, led by a 

young physicist named Saul Perlmutter. Saul’s plan was to use 

supernovae, or exploding stars, to measure the rate at which gravity was causing the expansion of the universe to slow down. In 

what is now a famous result, Saul and his team had measured 

enough supernovae by 1998 to conclude that the expansion of the 

universe was in fact accelerating. The expansion was going faster 

and faster. In other words, some force counteracting gravity is at 

work in the universe. We call it dark energy because we just don’t 

know what it is. 

The result was completely unexpected and it was a dramatic 

event for the physics community. This work, this small project, ultimately led to a Nobel Prize. Saul’s discovery has attracted the attention of scientists all over the world and inspired a new generation of students to study physics. Out of this small experiment a 

whole new field of research has been created and our concept of the 

universe has been fundamentally changed forever. Obviously, the 

return on the Federal Government’s investment in this case was 

huge. 
37 

And dark energy remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in fundamental physics today. Much more precise data is 

needed to figure out which of the many proposed theories is correct. 

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, is one of the 

small-scale projects recommended by P5 that could tackle this 

problem. DESI reuses an existing telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, 

and installs a new instrument and dedicates it to a wide-area survey of the universe. DESI will bring a new level of precision to the 

study of dark energy and could be built for about $40 million over 

four years. DESI would enable the United States to remain a leader in dark energy research into the next decade. 

P5 also recommended that the United States should remain a 

leader in the search for dark matter. Dark matter outweighs normal matter by about 6 to 1, and without it, the stars in our galaxy 

would fly off into space. A deep underground site to carry out this 

type of dark matter search already exists in the United States in 

the State of South Dakota. It is called the Sanford Underground 

Research Facility, or SURF. SURF hosts the world’s current most 

sensitive dark matter experiment and it could provide a home for 

one of the next-generation dark matter experiments that P5 recommended. SURF is also where the neutrino detectors for the long 

baseline neutrino facility that Nigel discussed will be located. 

Particle physics has come very far in the past century, finally 

discovering the long-sought Higgs boson, only to realize that we do 

not understand what makes up 95 percent of the universe, the 

mysteries that we call dark matter and dark energy. This is both 

humbling and exciting. P5 has recommended a carefully selected 

set of interlocking experiments, including a number of small- to 

medium-sized projects in this cosmic frontier. This program is optimized to achieve the most cost-effective approach in our quest to 

further understand the nature of matter, energy, space, and time. 

Thank you for your attention. I very happy to answer any questions you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Roe follows:] 
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Chairwoman LUMMIS. I thank the witnesses for being available 

for questioning today and for your really exciting testimony. 

I remind our Members that Committee rules limit questioning to 

five minutes. And so at this point I will open the round of questioning. So I recognize myself for five minutes. 

Now, in your report, the P5 recommends that the budget fraction 

for construction increased to 20 to 25 percent. And I understand 

right now it is around 16, so my first question is for you, Dr. Ritz. 

How did the P5 come to this determination and what is the significance of the likely outcome if DOE adopts this recommendation? 

Dr. RITZ. Yes. Thanks for the question. This was one of the tough 

issues. In a constrained budget scenario where there is a top-line 

number, if you increase the fraction devoted to projects, that means 

it comes from some other place. And in this case the other parts 

of the budget are in research, in the research program and operations. And in the planning there has been recently a reduction in 

the research program, and we endorse that and said that at least 

in the leanest budget scenario, that was going to be necessary, that 

the program that you get if you don’t devote the necessary resources for building things was just not going to get us where we 

needed. And that is why we called the report ‘‘Building for Discovery.’’ So this was a very tough choice, something that was discussed quite a bit. There are recommendations in the report about 

how to manage that—those expenditures judiciously, particularly 

for the research program. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. So this recommendation has implications 

for the colleagues at the table, so I want to ask Dr. Lockyer and 

Dr. Roe this question. How will the P5’s recommendation to increase the budget for construction affect operations and research at 

your respective labs? 

Dr. LOCKYER. Good question. So, first of all, I will say that we 

are in agreement with the idea that you have to really build for 

the future. So, as I tried to mention the context of where we are 

now is that we just come off being the leaders in the world in particle physics, having the highest energy machine, and now the 

question is what is for the future? And so you have to build something, and in order to do that, that comes through the project funding line. 

So now the issue is how do you shrink the research program and 

how do you shrink the operations? And the answer is carefully. I 

think we have to do that. We know we have to do that. But in 

terms of shifting workforce and so on, we will be moving people 

that would normally work on operations and move them into these 

research projects, which actually for a lot of engineers and scientists is a nice shift. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Dr. Roe? 

Dr. ROE. I would just mention that we have already seen a contraction of our research program. I believe that all of the national 

labs that have HEP program have already had reductions in force, 

and it has been a painful process but one that we recognize as necessary in order to increase our investment in exciting projects that 

will inspire young scientists and keep the United States at the 

forefront of particle physics. So it is a sacrifice that we have already been making and that we realized may have to continue. 
45 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Dr. Drell, I do have a question for you as 

well. Given your experience in this field, how do you view this specific recommendation by the P5 and is it worth the tradeoff? 

Dr. DRELL. I also agree with the others that it absolutely is 

worth the tradeoff, that it is painful for today but it is what makes 

the future possible, and therefore, I completely support it. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. Have any of you had experience with 

leveraging the construction component by having universities or 

States in the event of its expansion in the United States contribute 

to this because of the opportunities it provides for economic development, for the recruitment of world-class intellectual prowess to 

their States, and all that means for a community? 

Dr. RITZ. Yes, very much. That is a great question. As a university member, let me just say that universities and laboratories 

work in partnership wonderfully together. Having students, 

postdocs, resident universities which still have some infrastructure 

for producing detectors at experiments is a wonderful way; it is 

also an extremely efficient way of building these experiments. So, 

yes, it is an extremely important part of the field. It has been a 

challenge to maintain the infrastructure at universities with the 

overall shrinking capability, but it is core to our field. I am sure 

Nigel and Natalie would agree. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. I thank you. My time is expired. And now 

I yield to the Ranking Member, Mr. Swalwell. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Thank you, Chair. And thank you to the witnesses and, Dr. Lockyer, thank you for telling me about Fermilab. 

You have a faithful advocate in Congressman Hultgren, and I am 

now assured that you were put on this panel for more reasons than 

just separating the Berkeley and Stanford witnesses, who at home 

would be at odds with each other. 

Dr. Roe, I understand that you and your colleagues had to make 

a number of tough decisions under a difficult set of budget trajectories, and I commend you for rising to this challenge so that Members of Congress, without particle physics degrees, don’t have to 

make these decisions without your guidance. 

And I am, however, concerned about the consequences of the lowest budget scenario that you were required to consider, and with 

that in mind, I wanted to talk a little bit about DESI and why that 

is so important to improving our understanding of dark energy. 

And if you could also talk a little bit about what the sense of impacts on the U.S. physics community would be if this experiment 

was not allowed to move forward. 

Dr. ROE. Well, thank you very much for that question, Representative Swalwell. 

DESI is really a unique experiment in that it can make these 

very precise measurements of dark energy extending back billions 

of years in cosmic time, but at a cost that is very modest considering that its reach can rival expensive space mission capabilities. 

And the key is to recycle this existing telescope that the NSF has 

at Kitt Peak in Arizona that they were planning to retire. So we 

are making use of an existing facility, outfitting it with a modern 

robotics fiber fit spectrograph that we can measure 5,000 galaxies 

at a time with. And there is a lot of excitement around this project 

and it would certainly send a very discouraging message to the 
46 

many young scientists who have already voted with their feet to 

join this collaboration, they are excited about the science, eager to 

take on major roles and responsibilities. 

And also if we can’t proceed with DESI, it would send a negative 

message to our many collaborators from 10 countries who have indicated that they wish to invest here in this experiment and they 

may decide to try to do this experiment themselves in Europe or 

Asia if—rather than wait for us to commit if we can’t do it. 

Mr. SWALWELL. And, Dr. Roe, speaking of Europe or Asia, if 

DESI is funded and moves forward as a project, what will it be 

able to accomplish that cannot be accomplished or will not be accomplished by LSST or by the European dark energy missions and 

experiments that are expected? 

Dr. ROE. Well, DESI is very complementary to these other missions, as was called out in a community report on dark energy that 

the Department of Energy asked for two years ago. Basically, 

whereas DESI uses spectroscopic techniques, measuring the spectrum of galaxies, LSST uses imaging techniques, taking pictures of 

galaxies. And by doing these different approaches, they can constrain dark energy with different and complementary methods. Because it is such an unexpected phenomenon, we feel that we need 

confirmation from multiple techniques to really understand what is 

going on. So they really fit together in a planned program. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Great. Thank you, Dr. Roe. 

And, Dr. Drell, as you mentioned in your testimony, this is not 

your first P5 rodeo so to speak. You were pivotal in the creation 

of the first P5. And I was wondering if, thinking broader, you 

could—can you envision this process that the P5 undertook—can it 

and should it be applied to other areas of research that require 

long-term prioritization of projects under challenging budget scenarios, and if so, any examples? 

Dr. ROE. So actually other fields use processes that they are not 

called P5 but they have a similar outcome and are tuned to the 

specific circumstances of those fields for—— 

Mr. SWALWELL. How about fields that aren’t using it that you 

think would benefit if they took this process? 

Dr. ROE. I think most of the fields that I can think of, astronomy 

and astrophysics with its Decadal Survey, x-ray science with the 

BSAC subpanels, nuclear physics, they have a very good process. 

The fields that I am aware of that really need to do this have their 

ways of doing it. It is I think in some ways hardest in high energy 

physics because of the huge opportunity costs of our projects. They 

are so long that you make a decision now and it really constrains 

the program many, many years in the future. And that—it was 

that additional element of opportunity cost we felt wasn’t being 

taken into account in 2002. 

But I think actually we, in the P5 process, learned from how 

other fields do it, and in the way of science, they will learn from 

how this was done as they go forward in their planning. 

Mr. SWALWELL. Great. Thank you and I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman. 

And when I was in college, I studied the biological sciences and 

found myself with a considerable amount of physical sciences def-
47 

icit in my own intellectual capabilities. So I marvel at your capabilities intellectually and the excitement that you bring. 

But we do have one Member of this Committee that is at your 

level and I recognize him now, the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. 

Massie. 

Mr. MASSIE. I am definitely not at your level, but let’s manage 

expectations here. 

So please bring it down to our level a little bit here. Can you explain, any of you, the significance of the Higgs boson and why Congressmen and Congresswomen should be interested in that discovery and also the location of that discovery? Dr. Ritz. 

Dr. RITZ. Sure. I would be happy to do that. 

It is really an amazing time in physics, and let me try—rather 

than try to describe electroweak symmetry breaking and all the 

technical terms people try to explain, let me step back a minute 

and just try to give you a sense of why we are so excited about it. 

And it really reminds me of a story when I was a graduate student and I earned my keep by being a TA. We had intro physics 

labs. I actually really enjoyed teaching the biological science students. Actually at Santa Cruz it is great. And there was one of 

these labs that you probably remember, it wasn’t all that exciting, 

involved a plunger and a piston and a spring kind of like a pinball 

thing, you know. And I said, well, you know what, let’s—why don’t 

you take that and aim the thing at some angle and calculate where 

the thing is going to land, put a piece of paper there. And, you 

know, one of the students did it and he, you know, thank goodness, 

it hit spot-on and he was just so excited about that. I will never 

forget this, that he just wrote in his laboratory book in all caps, 

Newton’s laws allowed me to predict where this was going to land; 

physics really works. He was just so excited. 

So fast-forward from Newton’s time to the late 1800s when people studying electricity and magnetism realized they are actually 

two different aspects of the same thing, okay. Electricity and magnetism are actually unified forces, and that became the basis of all 

the technology that we enjoy today. 

Now, come to our era. There is another force. There aren’t that 

many forces; that is what is amazing. There is another force that 

can be unified yet with electricity and magnetism that is called the 

weak force. So here is the really interesting thing and that is related to that student back in Wisconsin. You take all of these phenomena that we see in our experiments and you can write down 

the theory that is really abstract and it involves all these terms 

that take a long time to explain. It is really beautiful stuff. It is 

fantastic. You look at that and you say this all works if this other 

phenomenon that we never thought to look at, that we never in a 

million years would think to do, and it took us 30 years or 40 years 

of experiment to find, we built the machines and we did it and it 

was there, okay. Science doesn’t really get any better than that. We 

understand it at a profound level. 

Now, what the significance of the Higgs is going to be it is just 

too soon to tell. It is a fantastic new discovery. It is a new—entirely 

new kind of particle and, you know, as you can tell, I think we are 

extremely excited about it. 
48 

Now, the—you asked about where. So it was discovered at the 

Large Hadron Collider facility at CERN. The United States, I believe, should be very proud of our role in that discovery. We had 

leadership in the two experiments that discovered it. It was our 

hardware that helped to make it possible. And for the next step 

these high luminosity upgrades, the upgrade to the machine, this 

is absolutely the best game in town. It won’t happen, it can’t happen without our know-how, as Nigel said. And it truly is a world 

discovery. 

Mr. MASSIE. So for everybody here, CERN is in Switzerland 

or—— 

Dr. RITZ. Yes. Actually, the particles cross the border between 

France and Switzerland. 

Mr. MASSIE. And probably—— 

Dr. RITZ. It is an open border. 

Mr. MASSIE. —some are escaping into the universe, too, right? 

So let me just play devil’s advocate here—— 

Dr. RITZ. Sure. 

Mr. MASSIE. —and I assure you this is being devil’s advocate. 

Why can’t the United States just kind of sit back and wait for the 

rest of the discoveries to happen in Switzerland and let our international partners—just ride on their coattails? 

Dr. RITZ. Sorry? Nigel—— 

Mr. MASSIE. Yes. 

Dr. RITZ. —would you like to answer that? Sure. 

Dr. LOCKYER. Sure. I think the main issue here is the technology 

associated with that for me, from my standpoint. So as I mentioned 

before, CERN relies on the United States for the next phase of the 

machine to be building the high field magnets, which give it the 

high luminosity, which allows you to do the new physics. We keep 

that technology. We own that technology and so that is the technology that I think is going to be important when we try and apply 

it to the commercial side of things. So you don’t lose any of that. 

At the same time, your scientists are working at the absolute 

forefront of the field and they come back excited about what they 

have learned; the students come back excited about what they have 

learned. They are not all going to stay in the field. In fact, roughly 

half of them go into business and in other areas of—you know, that 

they pursue in their careers. 

Mr. MASSIE. Occasionally engineers get lost in Congress, too. 

Dr. LOCKYER. They do. But I think that is—you know, so there 

are benefits both on the people’s side and on the technology side, 

and it works both ways actually. 

Mr. MASSIE. Thank you very much. My time is expired. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. When I first met my colleague, Mr. 

Massie, who is a graduate of MIT and holds dozens of patents, I 

asked him, tell me something you hold a patent in. And he said, 

well, I hold a patent in how one can feel non-matter. And I said 

to him how did you know that would be of any significance? And 

he said I didn’t and I still don’t. And someday somebody will make 

that next step, and in some ways that is what you are doing. That 

is what is so exciting and pioneering about it. 

Mr. MASSIE. Well, one thing is for certain. I used to work in virtual reality and I am back in virtual reality. 
49 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. The Chair completely understands that 

statement. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for holding 

this hearing. 

I try to understand particle physics but I am only an engineer, 

so I have a hard time reaching those levels, but it is very good to 

see you, Dr. Drell. I understand you are the new chair of—Dean 

of Engineering at Stanford, where I got an engineering degree out 

there, so I was very happy to hear that. And good to see you, Dr. 

Lockyer. I think Representative Hultgren will be probably asking 

questions next on this, and I know it is a great facility we have 

there in Illinois out in his district. 

First of all, let’s talk a little bit about more generally. I was very 

happy to get connected with David Kaplan and Mark Levinson 

when they were first really starting on ‘‘Particle Fever,’’ the movie. 

And I highly recommend the movie. I gave the introduction here 

in Washington for the premiere of the movie. The weekend it 

premiered in Chicago, I went to the movie and David was there 

and answered questions afterwards, and I never expected to see the 

kind of excitement that came out of that movie for the audiences. 

But I never expected that anyone could put together a movie to 

make particle physics really interesting and somewhat understandable. It helped me better understand—after spending many, many 

hours over the years talking about particle physics, the movie did 

a great job of helping me to understand, okay, what we are talking 

about. Help an engineer try to understand what we are talking 

about with particle physics. 

But it is great to see and I—you know, I said the way the movie 

ended with the discovery of the Higgs boson but still leaving sort 

of the cliffhanger of, okay, what does this mean now? I said, well, 

it is just a perfect setup for the sequel, but we are all waiting to 

see what—where we go from here. 

But I wanted to ask Dr. Lockyer about the Illinois Accelerator 

Research Center. I know the Department of Energy and the State 

of Illinois are in the partnership to build that, and once completed, 

the center is going to conduct research and help establish partnerships between the scientific and business communities to solve 

problems related to energy, the environment, medicine, and national security. 

I think that this is something where we see—in our roles here, 

it is hard sometimes to make the case for basic research and funding of basic research and people want to see results—what does 

this mean to us, as Dr. Massie was getting at there. A lot of times 

you don’t know, you don’t know for a long time, but we see it somewhere. But when we are talking about this center, can you say a 

few words about what you hope you will be able to do in terms of 

economic development and job growth? 

Dr. LOCKYER. Thanks for the question. 

The Illinois Accelerator Research Center is the—sort of the focus 

of Fermilab’s attempt to commercialize the technology associated 

with article physics and in particular accelerators. So maybe I will 

give you an Illinois example and you can apply it to the rest of the 

country. So, for example, high power electron accelerators can be 
50 

used to polymerize hydrocarbons, which means, you know, the 

bonds can be rearranged in a way that changes the texture and the 

behavior of the material. One example is radial tires are treated 

with electron beams to make them harder, so obviously that is a 

good thing. 

So what we are looking at now, for example, is looking at asphalt. So asphalt is a combination of gravel and bitumen, and we 

are looking at changing the chemical structure, the bitumen, so 

that the asphalt is harder and lasts longer. You know, $80 billion 

of money goes into paving roads in the United States, so if you can 

make a road last an extra year, it is a big deal. So we envision 

being able to treat the asphalt as you lay the pavement down with 

portable accelerators. You have seen us in the highways where 

they lay the asphalt and you try and stay away from it because it 

is a mess in terms of traffic, but we can imagine mounting small 

accelerators on the back of that vehicle and hardening the road as 

you lay it down. And so we have started that kind of research. That 

is just one of the examples were looking at but there is a number 

of other ones I could give you afterwards if you would like. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. I appreciate that. And as an engineer and a Member of the Transportation Committee, I can appreciate it and understand. So thank you. I will yield back. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. As you can see, our Members from Illinois 

are rightly proud of what is occurring at Fermi and I now turn to 

one of them, the gentleman from Illinois. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Thank you. 

Madam Chair, first of all, I ask unanimous consent to enter into 

the record a letter from the American Physical Society supporting 

the P5 process and its plan for the future of particle physics in the 

United States. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. So ordered. 

[The information appears in Appendix I] 

Mr. HULTGREN. Well, thank you, Chairwoman Lummis, so much. 

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today. I know 

sometimes my colleagues do get tired of me talking incessantly 

about Fermilab, so it is great to have some people here who actually know what is going on there before the Subcommittee and the 

great things that you are doing in this very important field. 

Since the shutdown of the Tevatron, I know how hard the community has been working to find the next frontier we will be embarking upon. We have heard the Secretary talk about the community getting on board for a plan, and that is why I am so grateful 

for the work of P5 that you did to put forward a responsible plan 

taking into account the budget constraints for this vision, which ensures projects that could be funded and realistically executed. I 

would like to thank Dr. Ritz and everyone involved for their hard 

work that they put into this. From everything I hear, the community has accepted this plan and is appreciative for it, as I am as 

well. 

Dr. Lockyer, at this time there are only six universities offering 

graduate programs to train accelerator scientists and technologists 

here in the United States. This is often a field that is self-selected 

and we need to maintain a leadership role just to maintain the capabilities and expertise we already have. I wondered if you could 
51 

explain the PIP–II upgrades, what they will make available to 

Fermilab and to the community as a whole. Besides just a longbased neutrino experiment, what other experiments will this technology and R&D allow the community to do? 

Dr. LOCKYER. Thanks for that. The PIP–II project, Proton Improvement Plan at Fermilab, is the one I am personally excited 

about because it really goes to the heart of what our field is trying 

to emphasize, which is accelerator research. The technology associated with it we were referred to as superconducting radio frequency technology. We are pushing the envelope in what you can 

do with that. It has applications in other fields. It has applications 

in commercialization. And because it is new and because it is a 

challenging project to build, it will allow us to stay at the cuttingedge of accelerator research over the next decade and provide the 

most powerful neutrino beams in the world. So again, that will be 

our competitive advantage on the science side. 

It is also a great place for training students, and I agree, there 

is a shortage of accelerator physicists. The schools that do offer accelerator programs are the top schools in the country. We are working with Northern Illinois University to create a program there. 

The new President Doug Baker is very committed to doing that. 

And so I see that there is numerous opportunities we have to impact our field on that. 

Mr. HULTGREN. And I appreciate that and I think that is such 

an important story again for all of us to be reminded of is the great 

cooperation that is going on there but also preparation that needs 

to happen. 

Dr. Lockyer and Dr. Ritz, since the report has been published, 

there have been some questions from the community as to whether 

LBNE will need to be completely reworked to create the international facility the report is pushing for. I wondered is this the 

case, and if not, how will LBNE be rolled into LBNF? Should our 

international partners have faith that our previous work is relevant and continued project engineering and design work is worthwhile? 

Dr. RITZ. Well, let me start and then hand it over to Nigel. 

The answer is yes. I think they should have faith. I think the report is actually a resounding endorsement of the science. It is in 

a sense, to quote President Reagan, throw deep, that this is—the 

community spoke very clearly at the Snowmass meeting and also 

our international colleagues and their expression of interest have 

said they really want this to be a capable experiment. So this is 

something that is going to take the world neutrino community to 

come together to have—to make happen, and we are in an excellent 

position in the United States to host this facility both with 

Fermilab and the San Fernando Valley research facility. 

And let me hand this over to Nigel, who is also of course working 

on the implementation. 

Dr. LOCKYER. Yes. I think this is one of the more challenging aspects of the P5 report for Fermilab and for the community. I think 

it is necessary to—in order to have the absolute optimal experiment put together that you have all your friends there, you invite 

their ideas, and so we are going through a process now where we 
52 

are asking whether the international community can see themselves being engaged in what we have started. 

We think we have done a great job so far and made tremendous 

progress, and I see that this—the P5 report just gives us more momentum because they see us having success, not only success in— 

technical success but also in terms of getting our community behind us. So I am very confident that we are going to see Europe 

get on board. Already CERN has said they want to be part of this. 

The U.K. and Italy have said they want to be part of this. Brazil 

has said they want to be part of this. So I see this is just—it is 

coming together now because I think the P5 report has just made 

us look more serious about what we are doing. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Well, again, my time is expired but I do want to 

just thank you all so much. It has been a challenging couple of 

years and this is an exciting time. I feel it we are right there and 

you all have been such a key part of that. So thank you. We want 

to help. We want to get this message out to our colleagues of how 

important this is right now. 

So, Chair, thank you for holding this hearing and I yield back. 

Chairwoman LUMMIS. I thank the gentleman. 

And before I recognize the gentleman from Texas, I want to alert 

our panel as to the plan here. We would love to have a second 

round of questioning if you are available. I will be turning the 

Chair over to the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Hultgren, and Mr. 

Lipinski of Illinois will assume the Ranking Member Chair. Mr. 

Swalwell and I are going to step out and discuss the markup of the 

authorizing legislation that includes funding for high energy physics. So please excuse us as we have a sidebar in the back room. 

And I now thank you again for being here. 

I do recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Veasey, and turn 

the Chair over to Mr. Hultgren. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I did want to—I have a question about international research 

projects and wanted to direct my question to Dr. Lockyer. 

I know that you are familiar with the ITER, which is being built 

in France and will be the first large-scale magnetic fusion facility 

in the world to produce net power. As has been mentioned multiple 

times, the LHC is under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, and 

Japan is bidding to host the International Linear Collider. Some 

may consider the fact that all of these next-generation major research facilities are being built in places outside the United States 

as evidence that we are losing our global leadership in research 

and innovation and was wondering what you think about those 

concerns that have been expressed. 

Dr. LOCKYER. Thanks for the easy question. The—I think the situation is changing. The global situation is changing with very large 

projects, and that is why I think it is so critical that the United 

States host its own large project and we are seeing the P5 report 

as putting forward the idea that we would host a neutrino project. 

These are very different from, let’s say, the ITER project, which 

is perhaps an example you want to stay away from in terms of 

challenges. It has had management challenges; it has had cost 

challenges. I usually draw your attention to our collaboration with 

CERN, which has been so successful. The project itself was capped. 
53 

We delivered—the United States delivered what it needed to, everybody else did. It was done on time, on schedule. It had tremendous success, as you know, with the Higgs boson. 

So I believe our field actually knows how to do international 

projects. We have demonstrated that. And so I don’t have the same 

concerns that maybe people who want to put ITER and hosting a 

science project in the same sentence. They are quite different. 

Mr. VEASEY. Well, how will we benefit? Like how will the United 

States benefit? I know Dr. Roe wants to answer that and she can 

answer that and jump right into this, too. How does the United 

States benefit from these international research projects even if 

they are being conducted overseas? I think any of the panelists— 

Dr. Roe, if you want to answer—go back to that and then answer 

that as well, too. 

Dr. ROE. Thank you. Thank you for the question. I think we do 

benefit by participating in international projects in many ways because our scientists, our engineers, our students contribute. We develop new ideas, we develop technologies, and we benefit our local 

economy by building things that are then installed overseas. But 

we don’t want all of the leading particle physics projects to be overseas. If we do, we are likely to witness a brain drain where many 

of the most talented young scientists that are trained in the United 

States will pursue the better opportunities abroad. And we have 

long benefited from the influx of the best and the brightest coming 

here to pursue an education and the research opportunities that we 

offer, and a reversal of this trend I think would be very, very bad 

for the United States. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you. 

Dr. LOCKYER. I completely agree with her answer. I think the 

issue is an exchange, and I believe that—as I said, that we should 

be hosting the project but we also benefit by going abroad. And as 

I mentioned earlier, our technology most of the time is developed 

in this country, stays in the country, is used for our own purposes, 

and yet we benefit from working with the best and the brightest 

around the world in these projects. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you. I yield back my time. 

Mr. HULTGREN. [Presiding] Thank you. 

We will now move to a second round of questions and I will yield 

to myself for five minutes. 

First question in the second round here addressed to Dr. Lockyer 

and Dr. Drell. I wonder, can you both explain the collaboration between high energy physics and other programs in DOE, especially 

basic energy sciences and specifically drawing attention to LCLS– 

II upgrades. How did this process work and what continued R&D 

work is necessary in HEP to complete these kinds of upgrades and 

build other new light sources? Also, while HEP is the steward of 

accelerator R&D, will it always be work in HEP that drives this 

technology? 

Dr. DRELL. Let me start and then maybe Nigel will complete. 

From the SLAC perspective, we have this magnificent opportunity to build LCLS–II building on fabulous science with LCLS. 

As you know, LCLS–II will involve a superconducting electron accelerator. We have no expertise in building superconducting electron accelerators at SLAC, but it is the way the system works in 
54 

the DOE that the laboratories have competencies that are very 

often unique to those laboratories and we help and support each 

other. This has gone on for some time. And for the LCLS–II we 

reached out to Fermilab and to Jefferson lab and to Cornell, who 

are the world-leading experts in this technology, and they will then 

help us and build that for us. 

I would like to say that this is a remarkably efficient process. It 

means that rather than having duplicative competencies at different labs, we instead use our unique expertise to support each 

other and it is going extremely well in the case of LCLS–II. SLAC 

could not on its own build that facility without the help of our partners, and we appreciate that they prioritize it extremely highly and 

it benefits science broadly in the Nation, and that is really our 

goal. 

Dr. LOCKYER. You know, I would second that and I would give 

you another example. So the P5 report talked about the cosmic 

microwave background as a new area that high energy physics 

would get involved in, and that also is a collaboration of various 

laboratories bringing different expertise to the table. So again, 

SLAC, Berkeley, Argonne, Fermilab work together to develop a 

chip, to mount chips, and each lab plays a different role working 

with the broader university community at the same time. 

So I think we all know what we do well and what we don’t do, 

and I think the idea that the labs work together makes tremendous 

sense to me and I am seeing that more and more all the time, and 

I know the Secretary is very much a big fan of doing that. And so 

we are doing it and it is quite successful. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Good. I do think it is an important message for 

Members of Congress to understand and to see again this ecosystem of how it works. We understand oftentimes our own labs 

but don’t understand how the working together, how important 

that is and the ripple benefits across education but also into the 

private sector as well, so I think it is great. Thank you. 

Dr. Ritz and also Dr. Lockyer, going back to your work with 

GLAST, you seem to be in a unique position to discuss how work 

in high energy physics is also affecting what we observe in outer 

space, whether it be dark matter, dark energy, or inflation. Can 

you talk about the expertise HEP will bring to the table for the 

next generation of space observatories and experiments such as 

LSST, which was also a top priority of the Decadal Survey? 

Also, what does neutrino science have to contribute to the understanding of the big bang and supernovas? 

Dr. RITZ. Oh, so much there. Great, thank you. Yes. 

So of course science doesn’t know about all these different stovepipes that we invent just so that we can get our work done, and 

there are areas that fall—there are really important aspects of 

science and great opportunities that fall between fields, and it is 

extremely important that they get done. Our report addresses that, 

as did the Decadal Survey that you mentioned, that by combining 

forces and doing the funding in a way that—in a multidisciplinary, 

multiagency sort of way that matches the science output or the 

science yield that benefit each of the different disciplines, we think 

this is a great way to go and it makes a big difference. 
55 

Particle physicists are really great at building large-scale, highly 

integrated systems, large numbers of channels, very precise measurements, very careful attention to errors, great detail to pull out 

the physics, okay, and combining that with the expertise of our astronomer friends and colleagues that if you are going to use the 

universe as a laboratory and make observations, you better talk 

very carefully and directly and collaborate with people who understand astronomy and astrophysics, that by working together you 

can pull out new information. So that is extremely important and 

extremely interesting. 

Neutrinos are a great example of a particle that just doesn’t 

know which science discipline they belong to. There is particle 

physics, there is nuclear physics. Each play really important roles 

and we work really well together on this actually. 

You would be surprised but, as Nigel said, neutrinos are all over 

the place. They actually had an influence on the growth of the 

structure that we see in the universe today. And by making these 

observations with telescopes and looking at the growth of structure—in other words, how did all the matter collect that we see— 

you can actually get information on the mass of neutrinos. And 

this—it looks to us to be one of the best ways in the near term of 

learning about neutrino properties, so what a wonderful connection 

that these things have and it is really going to accelerate progress 

we think. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Dr. Lockyer, anything quickly? 

Dr. LOCKYER. Yes. Quickly I will just say supernova is when a 

star dies and collapses and sometimes you create what is called a 

neutron star, and during that process you emit lots of antineutrinos. LBNF will be waiting there ready to observe those and 

we would see thousands of them as opposed to what has been observed so far from a famous event, 1987, we saw 10. And so the 

difference in scale is now humongous. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Great. My time is expired. I recognize my colleague, Congressman Lipinski, for five minutes. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. And unfortunately, I don’t have the 

time so I won’t be taking five minutes right now. 

I just want to make sure that I thank all of you for the work that 

you have done, the work on P5, which I think is extraordinary, 

really helps to light the way of where we need to go. And I assure 

you that, yes, probably everyone on this committee who is not from 

northeastern Illinois gets sick and tired of hearing Randy talk 

about the—about Fermi, so he certainly does probably every hearing that we have, does a good job with that, and about high energy 

physics in general. But thank you for your work, and I was hoping 

that the Chair would still be here and I was going to recommend 

to her that we do a Congressional Committee trip out to Fermi, out 

to the Bay Area because there is no two better places to go than 

to the Chicago area and the Bay Area. I have been to Fermi, I have 

been to SLAC, I have been to Lawrence Berkeley. I would be very 

happy to go back out there and happy to take a side trip to Santa 

Cruz also. I have been to Santa Cruz, not onto the campus, but 

have been to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk a few times. 

But thank you for your testimony and thank you for all the work 

that you are doing. 
56 

Mr. HULTGREN. I think that is a great suggestion and I will echo 

that as well to the Chair. 

I do want to thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony 

and the Members for their questions. The Members of the Committee may have additional questions for you, and we will ask you 

to respond to those in writing. The record will remain open for two 

weeks for additional comments and written questions from Members. 

The witnesses are excused and this hearing is adjourned. And 

thank you all. 

[Whereupon, at 11:22 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(57) 

Appendix I 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD
58 

SUBMITTED STATEMENT OF EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE

ON SCIENCE, SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY
59 

ARTICLE SUBMITTED BY REPRESENTATIVE RANDY HULTGREN
60 

Æ